Objective/Meaning  The research status and development trend of hollow village problems in China were analyzed, in order to provide reference for the relevant research and policy formulation.

  Methods/Procedures  By searching the papers of Chinese core journals in the Academic Journals Network Publishing Library of CNKI, the literature on the research of hollow villages published from 1996 to 2021 was obtained, and the CiteSpace software was used to draw the knowledge map of the research status of hollow villages in China.

  Results/Conclusions  The results showed that: 1) The research field of hollow villages has received high attention from the national level and the academic circles, the number of publications was generally characterized by a rapid rise first and then a steep decline; 2) The scholars focusing on this field mainly formed three research teams, but the cooperation density was low; 3) The current research hotspots in this field were mainly the formation and evolution of hollow villages, the population and land problems of hollow villages and their governance strategies; 4) In general, this field has gone through three research stages: the germination period (1996—2009), the rapid development period (2009—2017) and the stable development period (2017 to date). In the future, it was necessary to further focus on the technical research on the formation and evolution of hollow villages, and explore the path of population flow and land transfer and the classified governance models.